Yet you’ve accepted the life that he offers,—­
  Sunk to his level,—­not raised him to yours. 
  All your fair flowers have their roots in his coffers: 
  Empty the gold-dust, and then what endures?

  So, then, we leave you!  Your world is not ours. 
  Alice and I will not trouble you more. 
  Almost too heavy the scent of these flowers
  Down the broad stairway.  Quick, open the door!

  Here, in the free air, we’ll pray for you, lady! 
  You who are changed to us,—­gone from us,—­lost! 
  Soon the Atlantic shall part us, already
  Parted by gulfs that can never be crossed!

CHARLESTON UNDER ARMS.

On Saturday morning, January 19, 1861, the steamer Columbia, from New York, lay off the harbor of Charleston in full sight of Fort Sumter.  It is a circumstance which perhaps would never have reached the knowledge of the magazine-reading world, nor have been of any importance to it, but for the attendant fact that I, the writer of this article, was on board the steamer.  It takes two events to make a consequence, as well as two parties to make a bargain.

The sea was smooth; the air was warmish and slightly misty; the low coast showed bare sand and forests of pines.  The dangerous bar of the port, now partially deprived of its buoys, and with its main channel rendered perilous by the hulks of sunken schooners, revealed itself plainly, half a mile ahead of us, in a great crescent of yellow water, plainly distinguishable from the steel-gray of the outer ocean.  Two or three square-rigged vessels were anchored to the southward of us, waiting for the tide or the tugs, while four or five pilot-boats tacked up and down in the lazy breeze, watching for the cotton-freighters which ought at this season to crowd the palmetto wharves.

“I wish we could get the duties on those ships to pay some of our military bills,” said a genteel, clean-spoken Charlestonian, to a long, green, kindly-faced youth, from I know not what Southern military academy.

We had arrived off the harbor about midnight, but had not entered, for lack of a beacon whereby to shape our course.  Now we must wait until noon for the tide, standing off and on the while merely to keep up our fires.  A pilot came under our quarter in his little schooner, and told us that the steamer Nashville had got out the day before with only a hard bumping.  No other news had he:  Fort Sumter had not been taken, nor assaulted; the independence of South Carolina had not been recognized; various desirable events had not happened.  In short, the political world had remained during our voyage in that chaotic status quo so loved by President Buchanan.  At twelve we stood for the bar, sounding our way with extreme caution.  Without accident we passed over the treacherous bottom, although in places it could not have been more than eighteen inches below our keel.  The shores closed in on both sides